Global Deadlock
At the Munich Security Conference on February 16th, UN Secretary-General António Guterres delivered a dire assessment of the current state of global affairs. Despite existential challenges in urgent need of serious diplomacy and concerted efforts, “the global community is more fragmented and divided than at any time during the past 75 years.” Addressing the conflict in Gaza, Guterres warned that unprecedented deadlock in the Security Council is setting the stage for an “unpredictable free-for-all with total impunity.” He offers a solution that, although largely correct, seems trivially obvious. In working for a ‘New Agenda for Peace’, the international community should seek a global order that is effective, comprehensive, and “works for everyone”.
The Secretary-General is right to paint the global predicament in bleak terms. Over the last decade, the international order has been besieged by alarming rates of democratic backsliding, continuous declines in the Global Peace Index, increasing risks of great power wars, and impending threats of climate catastrophe. These conditions, coupled with various geopolitical flare ups and enduring humanitarian crises, have engendered widespread fear and skepticism. More recently, international turbulence has been pushed to the brink by the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022 and Israel-Hamas war in 2023. However, whereas disagreements that arrest the international community are often matters of geopolitical interest and diplomatic procedure—say, over territorial disputes in the South China Sea—disunity is increasingly cutting deeper. Divisions in the Security Council and the controversial ruling against Israel in January by the International Court of Justice, for instance, highlight fundamental ethical disagreements in the international community. The described deadlock arresting the international order is not about disagreements over how to achieve peace given shared ethical principles. It is about the ethical principles themselves—when violence is justified, the innate value of human life, the right to self-determination, and so on.
It is not clear, then, how a global order that “works for everyone” is possible when there are incommensurable principles that govern the US and China, Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Hamas, among other actors. On the contrary, a global framework for peace must ardently commit to a set of fundamental ethical principles grounded in ethical universalism, which apply fairly to everyone but that will not ‘work for everyone’. Principles of ethical universalism are already present in the UN’s Charter and the numerous multilateral treaties ratified in its history. Although insufficient for fostering unity in creating a roadmap to peace, returning to and defending these values that extend universally is a critical prerequisite. Absent insisting on universalist principles, international deadlock is inevitable.
Universal Ethics
Although there are various theories of universal ethics—commonly, utilitarianism and Kantian deontology—their fundamental claims share a basic form. That is, there are certain ethical axioms, like the innate value of human life, and rules, that one ought to maximize human life and minimize suffering, that extend universally. They apply in all instances, regardless of the inclinations or desires of individuals (or states). In the words of English philosopher Bertrand Russell:
It is, indeed, so evident that it is better to secure a greater good for A than a lesser good for B … [I]f A happens to be someone else, and B to be myself, that cannot affect the question, since it is irrelevant to the general maxim who A and B may be.
It is because of this basic neutrality, both in its principles and application, that ethical universalism is the best candidate for a shared framework. Ethical universalism, unbound by the subjectivity of personal ideology or religion, sets the terms of deliberation over just and unjust actions on logic and empiricism. Under utilitarianism, if the actions of a state are empirically found to jeopardize more lives than they save, then the actions are resolutely unjust, regardless of convictions of vengeance or divine right. Under deontology, a state may be found to violate ethical conduct if they resort to excessively cruel weapons—say, anti-personnel landmines as banned under the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons—regardless of the expected convenience or strategic benefit. In any case, the ethical maxims come prior, and deliberation is constrained only to whether an actor has violated them.
The notion of values that extend beyond oneself is not an invention of the Enlightenment. But it is this 17th and 18th century philosophical tradition that distinctly shaped contemporary universal ethics as a fundamentally secular and rational matter. Enlightenment universal values laid the ethical foundations for the UN Charter (1945) and the subsequent Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (1948). In fact, the very concept of a ‘League of Nations’, governed by international law, is indebted to Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant’s 1795 essay on Perpetual Peace, which establishes universal moral law as the basic condition for peace amongst nations. The commitment to ethical universality is made expressly clear from the first sentence of the UDHR, asserting the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.” Such fundamental, inalienable rights are familiar: life, liberty, and security. From these universal ethical axioms, universal rules logically follow, like the rule against “arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.” Correctly, the UDHR recognizes that the acceptance of such universal principles is necessary to provide a “foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”
Universalism Under Threat
Acceptance of principles grounded in universality is, by no means, universal. We find that within today’s prominent conflicts and debates over them, opposing parties assume ethical justifications that are either un-universal or blatantly anti-universal. In order to ‘denazify’ Ukraine, Russian President Putin has authorized fighting to the “last Ukrainian” in the face of resistance. Inversely, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has framed Ukrainian resistance as a fight against the evil of Russian state-terrorism, analogizing it to Hamas.
In these cases, among countless others, self-stated ethical imperatives supersede commitments to the universal right to life and security. Without a mutual imperative to protect life— regardless of where or on whose side that life is—enduring resolution beyond expedient, short-term settlement is impossible. If both sides systematically privilege the value of one population over another, the convergence of ethical conclusion is a logical impossibility.
The Case Against Universalism
Given such ethical deadlocks, with no clear reconciliation of ethical ideology, we may be tempted into denying universal values altogether. To that end, both China and Russia have embraced models that functionally amount to moral anti-universality, despite thin appeals to the universal values outlined in the UN Charter that they helped found. Chinese President Xi proclaimed that, “We advocate the common values of humanity”, but also, simultaneously, “Countries need to keep an open mind in appreciating the perceptions of values by different civilizations, and refrain from imposing their own values or models on others and from stoking ideological confrontation.” Setting aside the remarkable convenience of Xi’s position given repeated UN condemnations of human rights abuses, advocating common values while allowing states to adopt their own presents a puzzling contradiction. How would this model arbitrate cases where a country’s values are at odds with common values? Either all ethical values are authorized or there are some universally right and some universally wrong. It cannot be both.
In a 2022 presidential decree, President Putin established a similarly contradictory model, although in regard to its own values: “Traditional values include life, dignity, human rights and freedoms, patriotism, civic consciousness, service to the Fatherland and responsibility for its destiny, high moral ideals … as well as the unity of Russia’s peoples.” Over its course, this pronouncement increasingly slips into nationalistic anti-universalism. The nature of universal human dignity and the universal imperative to protect life logically require priority over patriotism and service to the state. One’s obligation to the state may constitute noble character, but it is not an ethical given, since it cannot be universal by nature. Fortunately, this ambiguity over Putin’s ethical vision is quickly dispelled by the mentioned merciless rhetoric about Ukraine.
While the ethical models offered by China and Russia are logically suspect at best, this does not mean that the purported universalism of the UN and, more often than not, Western states is immune to criticism. The West has a long record of colonialism, gratuitous warfare, and human rights abuses across the globe. And it has often carried out such morally reprehensible actions, often motivated by economic and geopolitical interest, in the name of universal values. China correctly offers its relativist model of ethics against this backdrop of rampant hypocrisy and self-righteous claim to universality in the West, especially the US. In response to a US veto at the UN Security Council over a proposed Gaza ceasefire, Chinese Ambassador to UN Zhang Jun claimed that “It is extremely hypocritical to tolerate the continuation of the conflict while paying lip service to the protection of human rights and the protection of women and children.”
Arguments that denounce the double standards of the UN and the West are often legitimate and of moral imperative. However, they do nothing to disprove the necessity of universality. On the contrary, claims that problematize Western hypocrisy and paternalism in its application of universal values—whether from states, well-intentioned activists, or the foreign policy intelligentsia—implicitly rest upon universal values. The West is unjust only insofar as it abuses and fails to uphold universal human dignity and the universal value of human life. If we were not to hold certain ethical truths as self-evident and universal, then there would be no secure grounds to level ethical criticisms of maliciousness and hypocrisy against the UN or the West. It could simply be claimed, for instance, that violations of human dignity are simply part of the US’ “perceptions of values” and, therefore, it would be wrong to impose on the US values to the contrary. The defining feature of universal ethics is that its truths bear no relations to those that advocate it—it applies to the US just the same as it does China.
It is no coincidence, then, that even in advancing anti-universalist ethical models, Chinese and Russian state ideology still deems it necessary to appeal to universal values. It is impossible to have a rational ethical system that is not universal in nature. Even Xi’s injunction to not paternalistically impose one’s values on another implies universality—in no instance is it justified to impose one’s values on another. This is then an ethical imposition in itself and runs into contradiction. If we are to have ethical principles at all—whether between individuals or between states—they must presume universalism. The task is to determine which principles are of logical necessity and self-evident.
Toward a Shared Horizon
In face of historical grievances and inclinations toward vengeance, or of divine right, or of genuine interest in prioritizing one’s citizens, states must be strictly held accountable to a universalist ethical framework from below—policy advocacy organizations, activists, constituents, etc.—and above—international institutions. National interest, culture, religion, and other ideological idiosyncrasies are, of course, of value. Humanity’s diversity is undoubtedly part of what makes it worth defending against existential threats in the first place. However, such idiosyncrasies are inappropriate and dangerous starting points for diplomacy. Against trivialization, distortion, and abuse—both on the international stage and within policy discussions—we should center ethical principles that are ruthlessly universal. As shown, this is not necessarily a political point as much as it is logical, which everyone is presumably interested in being. Ethics must have a universal quality to make sense, otherwise ethical pronouncements collapse into a matter of statements of preference.
To return to the ‘New Agenda for Peace’, Secretary-General Guterres should not be afraid to unequivocally insist on universalism against the weaker pluralist framework he seems to imply. Accommodating actors who implicitly advocate parochial ethics, like China, or those that espouse universalism while continually violating it, like the US, within a pluralist framework may seem like a pragmatic necessity. Even so, the benefits of inclusion will inevitably be nullified by deadlock—as we face now—which in turn risks international catastrophe. Fortunately, insisting on universalism would itself naturally address some pragmatic concerns about follow-on and enforcement. Firstly, a strong commitment to universal ethics, if applied faithfully, would bolster the UN’s global legitimacy and authority, which has suffered from perceptions of moral vacuity. Secondly, it would compel actors to follow-on since, if they were to reject a clear and neutral commitment to universal values, then they would, in effect, reveal their own moral vacuity and delegitimize themselves.
Unequivocally advocating universalism at the center of a ‘New Agenda for Peace’ would not be unprecedented. Universalist principles already form the basis of the UN Charter, agreed upon in the wake of World War Two to safeguard against existential catastrophe born of idiosyncratic ideology. Mutual commitment to the universal principles in the Charter and the subsequent international laws they inspired, however flawed, proved critical in helping stave off global conflagration during the Cold War. Such belief will again prove necessary in resolving the current deadlock that threatens international catastrophe and sustains widespread human suffering. If there is to be perpetual peace, as Kant once imagined, it is clear that it must begin with universalism.
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Image Source: John Samuel on Wikimedia Commons